


The World Showed No Compassion To Me

by creatureofhobbit



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-07
Updated: 2015-05-07
Packaged: 2018-03-29 12:51:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3897010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creatureofhobbit/pseuds/creatureofhobbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Isaac grows frustrated at being expected to write everyone happy endings when he cannot do so for himself and takes control of his own and others' destinies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The World Showed No Compassion To Me

He’d been told the ground rules the day he took on the role: he was to record the tales in the storybook but without making changes to the outcomes himself, he was not to write anything for himself, and that good always won. These ground rules had been set in stone for hundreds of years, adhered to by many authors, and when Isaac took on the role, he never thought that he would be the one to break the rules.

When he was sent to London, England, even then Isaac had no idea that he was embarking on the trip that would change not only his own fate, but that of many others in his world. The crazy thing was, initially he’d thought he was keeping to the rules by helping good win; he had believed Cruella when she had claimed that it was her mother who had poisoned all her husbands, and that by rescuing her and by giving her the power to change her own fate he was doing the right thing. 

When he realised that in fact it was her mother who was telling the truth and that by granting Cruella the power to control animals, Cruella had manipulated him as well, Isaac initially felt angry that he had been used as her puppet. However he later came to the conclusion that by abiding by the rules, he had in fact been a puppet long before he had even met Cruella, and she was the one who had taught him that it didn’t have to be that way, who had made him realise his full potential of who he could be. Isaac could take control, he could change the endings and improve on them. As he’d written that Cruella no longer had the ability to take a life, he’d enjoyed the feeling of power it had given him to control her fate, to pay her back, to manipulate her the way he had been manipulated himself. Now he could do the same to everyone, to make the stories more interesting.

As time went by, as Isaac separated Zelena from Cora, as he encouraged Snow to tell Regina’s secret, the Sorceror began to grow alarmed at what he perceived as Isaac’s abuse of his power. “These are children’s lives you are playing with,” he had begged. “Can you not step aside, tell their stories as you were originally intended to do, allow them to have their happy endings?”

“No one wrote me a happy ending,” Isaac had snapped back. When his father had turned his back on his family, when his mother had treated him with nothing but disdain, where had any author been to write anything happier for him? When he had seen what he had perceived as Cruella being mistreated by her family, Isaac had immediately identified with her as a kindred spirit, and wondered if she were to finally be the happy ending that he had longed for. He had never set out deliberately to punish any of the children he wrote about as he interfered with their stories, yet as he grew to understand the power he held, he understood how much he had resented it over the years, having to write about happy endings for other people knowing he was never likely to have one of his own and there was nothing he could do about it.

“I am beginning to feel like I made a bad decision in choosing you,” the Sorceror replied.

“But there’s nothing you can do now,” Isaac had pointed out. “An Author cannot be replaced until their death.” And since the Sorceror was so determined to stick to the rules, Isaac was confident that nothing was going to happen to him. Until the day he wrote that the Sorceror transferred all the potential for darkness from Snow White and Prince Charming’s unborn child to Maleficent’s egg. Trapped within the pages of the book, able to faithfully record events as they happened and yet unable to change anything, the frustration Isaac had felt with his old life began to rise in him again. All he could do was wait for the Dark Curse to be broken and for someone to free him, in order that he could take control of his own and others’ destinies once more.

When Emma Swan finally freed him from the book and Isaac was approached by Mr. Gold to write happy endings for the villains, initially Isaac felt that he had finally found someone more in tune with his intentions than the Sorceror. However, as he spent more time in Storybrooke he began to realise that villains were appearing to be receiving their happy endings with no involvement from him at all. Ursula had been reunited with her father and with her voice, Captain Hook was happy with Emma, Maleficent and Lily were making progress towards building a relationship, and Regina, who had been so close to providing him with an outlet by asking him to write Zelena out of existence, had then declared that she no longer wanted that, but was going to take her destiny into her own hands and make her own happy ending with Robin. With all these people taking charge of their own fates, Isaac was reminded all over again of his feelings of uselessness whilst trapped.

But Mr. Gold still needed him. With him, Isaac now had his outlet. So he would go to him, write him the ending that he wanted. And Isaac would have a purpose once more.


End file.
